Undertale creator Toby Fox released a free, rather odd game yesterday called Deltarune, which those of you who are cleverer than I will notice is an anagram of Undertale. And it is, as Samuel put it, "familiarly Undertale-y." But what is it, actually? That was less clear, and Fox himself didn't help with that when he warned that, "FOR PUBLIC SAFETY, YOU ARE ADVISED TO REFRAIN FROM DISCUSSION OF THE PROGRAM FOR 24 HOURS."
Today, Fox took to TwitLonger to clear up some of the mysteries, although in truth he didn't answer questions so much as just open the door to more. To the first and most obvious inquiry, for example—whether Deltarune is a sequel to Undertale—he replied, "Please don't worry too much about that."
"I will say that basically, what you're seeing here is not the world of Undertale. Undertale's world and ending are the same as however you left them. If everyone was happy in your ending, the people in the Undertale world will still be happy. So, please don't worry about those characters, and that world. It will remain untouched," he wrote.
"It's just a game you can play after you complete Undertale, if you want to."
The story? "There's a lot of questions I'd like to answer, too. That's why I have to make the game. Please wait until then."
Is this the final design? "It's possible I could change things. This is basically a demo. I might even change this first chapter before release depending on how development goes."
When is the next chapter coming? "This is a difficult question," Fox began, before explaining that the demo for Undertale took a few months to make but the demo for Deltarune took a few years, meaning that for all practical purposes it's basically impossible for him to do it alone.
"However, it MIGHT be possible to create the game if I'm able to make a team," he wrote. "So I'm going to try making a team. Because I really want to make this. But I may not be able to succeed because I have no experience successfully directing a team and I have no idea who I'm going to work with."
He hasn't actually started putting the team together yet, so there's no timeframe on that either.
One thing he does have nailed down is how the game will be released: It will be broken into chapters but the plan is to make and then release them all at once; they won't be available for purchase separately, and there will be no preorders. And of course there's not even a guess about a price at this point.
He also talked about why he chose to release this demo when everything else about Deltarune, or whatever it ultimately ends up being called, is so far off and undefined.
"For the past 3 years I've been waking up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep because I've been thinking about the scenes that happen in the game. Even though so many details are still hazy, I really want to show you the things I've been thinking about. That's really my only reason for making this game. If I don't show you what I'm thinking, I'll lose my mind," he wrote.
"I was really worried at first about making this. The expectations for my next work would be really high, so high that I knew that no matter what I did, I felt like people would be underwhelmed. If you played Undertale, I don't think I can make anything that makes you feel 'that way' again. However, it's possible I can make something else. It's just something simple but maybe you'll like it. See you in ?? years... OK? Don't forget."
I suspect we won't.
